Getting the girls' trip out of the group chat just feels right.

The Fort Myers area delivers the memories, bonding, and let's do this every year energy.

Start planning at visit fort Myers.com.

This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Sadia Shepard read her story, Kim's Game,

from the January 19th, 2026 issue of the magazine.

Shepard is a writer and documentary filmmaker.

Her first book, The Girl from Foreign,

a memoir, was published in 2008.

Now here's Sadiah Shepard. Kim's game.

It still feels strange not to start her day with the first milking.

Unnatural somehow.

From where Helen stands, she has a good view through her kitchen window of the land she sold last month,

500 hectares of open pasture, bordered by another 300,

of native forest. She pours herself a cup of strong tea and pictures her cows in their stalls,

their udders heavy and swollen, as they stamp their hoofs with impatience.

She can hear the rhythmic, repetitive sound of the milking machine and smell the sharp, pungent odor of the parlor when the cows knows their way into the troughs, and she attaches the cups to their teats.

The new owner's sons take care of it all now, and they do a fine job. Still, she's not accustomed to changing her habits. She puts her empty mug on the

counter and observes her hand as if it belonged to someone else. It looks like a stranger's hand,

an old woman's hand. Helen hears Tiago's truck in her driveway and watches from the screen

door as he ambles up her steps, making his familiar

...